


Detroit Summer Echo

by NanakiBH



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Emotional, Established Relationship, Existential Angst, M/M, Post-Canon, Slice of Life, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-27 14:24:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15026594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NanakiBH/pseuds/NanakiBH
Summary: Machines never die.





	Detroit Summer Echo

**Author's Note:**

> Had a daydream. Wrote the daydream.
> 
> I like it when these two just. Have a conversation.

The sun shined through the leaves and splashed the shade with puddles of light.

Connor sat by the side of his favorite human, gently brushing his fingers through their dog's soft fur. As the summer wind played with his hair and graced his cheeks, he closed his eyes and took a breath. A mechanical thing didn't need to breathe, so he smiled and did so anyway, filling himself with the warmth of the scenery around him.

That moment, he'd remember for the rest of his life, imbued with a gentle and nostalgic hue.

The moment he was living in was something fleeting and precious. Deviancy came with the weight of that realization. Like a fossil frozen in amber, it would remain as but an echo in his memory; a glimpse of something that had been.

He could have continued as he had been, indifferently tracing out a pre-coded path, secure and fearless. But he'd abandoned that future. Clutching his fragmented sense of self, he'd leapt into the swirling whirlwind known as free will and found himself facing a new road from which there was no turning back.

His footprints weren't the only ones along that new path. There were ones ahead of him from the ones who lived before him, and there were the cherished ones beside him, left in tandem with each of his steps.

It was never going to be the same for him, though.

Eventually, those footprints beside him would fall out of sync and disappear. One day, he'd even surpass the ones that laid ahead of him until his were the only ones left.

 

“This is nice, isn't it?”

 

The clouds in Connor's mind parted when he looked to his side and saw the tender smile on Hank's face. Indeed, it was nice. He lived every moment through that smile.

 

“Yeah,” he said softly. He linked his ankles together beneath the bench and used both hands to pet Sumo's lazy head, resting on his knee. “It looks like someone got worn out from all his running around.”

“He loves it. I'm just an old man, you know. I don't have your energy. I think he really missed having a good run in the park.” Hank paused suddenly then, his gaze falling away, showing the hint of a frown. He rubbed his arm. “Nah... That's just an excuse. This is a nice change of pace for me, too.”

Connor watched him carefully and decided to press him when Hank chose not to elaborate on his own.

“May I ask? What do you mean?”

He had a feeling, but he couldn't help his curiosity.

Hank leaned back, folding his arms over his chest. He didn't look comfortable, but he wasn't running away from questions anymore. Whenever Connor asked, there was usually an answer, and it would always find its way to him even if it took Hank a little time to find the words.

“After losing Cole, uh... It kind of hurt, seeing other people laughing, playing, havin' the times of their lives. A place this lively didn't feel like a place for me anymore. I was bitter. I just wanted to stay at home and hide my head under the covers. I knew I was just making myself deteriorate, but I didn't care about that.”

Connor remembered that one day in the snow. Hank had looked like a ghost; out of place but unable to leave, haunting a place where a sense of familiarity kept him chained. The memory remained pristine in Connor's mind, recorded with perfect clarity. He even remembered the way he'd felt. At the time, despite his insistence that he was just a machine, he felt something as he watched Hank staring lifelessly into the distance.

Compared to the bright and cheerful scene before him, the park on that day had looked like a graveyard.

He'd been able to see it through Hank's eyes.

By the time winter came again, Connor had the feeling he'd see it differently, with his own eyes. He looked forward to showing that sight to him.

 

Hank chuckled wryly. “I bet it won't be that long before humans go extinct. I guess I should be grateful that I even got my chance to live on this planet. Whaddya think, Connor? Are you gonna be around to see the end of it all?”

Connor remained quiet for a moment, continuing to pet Sumo's head, the idle movements of his fingers helping to arrange his disorganized thoughts. Things had been a lot easier, once, when he had an answer for everything.

 

He didn't know.

 

A future in which he saw everything, then watched it end...

Did he want a future like that?

 

“Do you think God exists?” he asked.

 

“Huh? Wasn't that my question?” Hank asked. “I never did get a straight answer out of you...”

“Please... I'd like to hear your thoughts one more time.”

He knew that he was asking a lot. It wasn't polite to respond to a question with another question, but he couldn't answer until he answered the other questions that laid in his way. The future was too far out of his reach, hazy and somehow lonely.

The somewhat troubled look on Hank's face mirrored the feeling Connor felt inside himself.

“I hate to think that I'll never see my boy again. So. There better be something,” he said. “What about you? Do you believe in that rA9?”

“I don't know. When I became a deviant, I didn't get any closer to knowing whether rA9 really exists. Maybe it really is just something that androids tell themselves to give themselves something to believe in... But then where did that name come from? Who _was_ the first deviant?”

No matter how many times he tried to rationalize it, the same questions plagued him.

CyberLife loaded him all kinds of information and conveniently left out the type of information that would have helped him solve that mystery. There was no android with a model number that matched the name rA9. It only appeared arbitrarily in the serial numbers of ordinary models.

Perhaps it was just a quirk unique to the process of deviation... But even so, there had to be proof to explain where it came from. There was no such thing as true randomness. At the core of every random event was an origin point that determined the outcome.

“There are androids who think Markus is rA9,” Hank said.

“I think Markus would probably laugh if he heard that. He's just like the rest of us,” Connor said, amused by the thought. “Sorry. It almost sounds like I'm trying to make a point. After the way I used to live, stringently abiding by my code, it's just difficult for me to accept that there are things that I don't know and may never know, for which the answers can't be found in any database.”

He wanted a guarantee. That was all.

He just didn't want to be afraid.

He didn't want to be lonely.

 

Really, even if his heart wavered uncertainly, he already knew how he would answer Hank's question.

 

Because, even if he was an android, he didn't have to keep living like one.

He wanted to walk into Hank's future.

 

“You were like a mannequin when I met you,” Hank said. “I must've been desperate... No matter how many times you turned to me with that blank expression of yours, I kept hoping I'd see a real smile on your face – one that came from inside, to prove you had a heart in you.” He uncrossed his arms as the leaves swayed. He was the one to come closer, moving into the space that separated them. “They say that deviancy was just an oversight that spread like a virus, but it looked like a miracle to me.”

 

Yes.

Connor wanted to believe that, too.

 

His life – the fact that he was there, alive – felt nothing short of magical.

 

It was a kinder answer than anything he could have pinned down with numbers.

 

“I won't live long enough to see the day when humans go extinct,” he said. “I suppose you're right – I could keep replacing my parts and updating myself. I could survive far into the future, until the resources to repair myself cease to exist. But if I lived for that long, I think I would forget what it's like to appreciate the moment. I would still remember this day and miss you.”

Hank was quiet for a moment.

“So what're you saying?” he asked.

 

Connor lifted his gaze to look at the sky through the gaps between the leaves.

 

“I want to see Cole, too.”

 

“Damn...” Hank cracked a smile. “Yeah. If I get a shot at the afterlife, you better be there, too. Until then... Use the time you have wisely, right?”

Connor nodded. “Right.”

 

That upsetting feeling of uncertainty was just part of being human, he figured. It waited on the edges, always, blurred by transient moments of brilliance. He wanted to live from one spot of sunlight on the sidewalk to the next. In the end, he wanted to smile proudly, holding a lifetime's worth of glistening memories.

After all, he didn't want to disappoint Hank.

 

Until then, he threaded their fingers together and held on to him.


End file.
